The Governmentality of Slavery in Colonial Boston

AmerikastudienAmerican Studies

A QuarterlyVolume 58 • Number x • 2013

58 • 1 • 2013

Contents

Articles

★ d o m in ik n a g l , The Governmentality of Slavery in Colonial Boston, 16 9 0 - 17 6 0

★ j a s o n s. p o l l e y , Race, Gender, Justice: Storytelling in The Greenlanders

★ m a r t a p u x a n -o l i v a , A Mysterious Heart: ‘Passing’ and the Narrative Enigma in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Light in August

★ s a r a h h e i n z , “ Not White, Not Quite” : Irish American Identities in the U.S. Census and in Ann Patchett’s Novel Run

★ A n d r e w m i l l e r , Taking Fire from the Bucolic: The Pastoral Tradition in Seven American War Poems

★ d i m i t r i o s l a t s i s , Nature’s Nation on the Screen: Discursive Functions of the Natural Landscape in Early American Film

Forum

★ f r a n k m e h r i n g , The 1946 Holocaust Interviews: David Boder’s Intermedia Project in the Digital Age

REV IEW S

UniversitätsverlagW I N T E R

Heidelberg

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0

340

-28

27

AmerikastudienA Quarterly

Edited forthe German Association for American Studies by

GENERAL EDITOR

Oliver Scheiding

EDITORS ASSISTANT EDITORS

Christa Buschendorf Tanja BuddeAndreas Falke Patricia GodsaveHans-Jürgen Grabbe Alfred Hornung Sabine Sielke

Volume 58- 1 (2013)

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Contents

DOMINIK NAGL

JASON S. POLLEY

MARTA PUXAN-OLIVA

SARAH HEINZ

ANDREW MILLER

DIMITRIOS LATSIS

FRANK MEHRING

JASPER M. TRAUTSCH

WOLFGANG SPLITTER

MARCUS GRÄSER

ARTICLES

The Governmentality of Slavery in Colonial Boston, 1690-1760 5Race, Gender, Justice: Storytelling in The Greenlanders 27A Mysterious Heart: ‘Passing’ and the Narrative Enigma in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Light in August 51“Not White, Not Quite”: Irish American Identities in the U.S. Census and in Ann Patchett’s Novel Run 79 Taking Fire from the Bucolic: The Pastoral Tradition in Seven American War Poems 101 Nature’s Nation on the Screen: Discursive Functions of the Natural Landscape in Early American Film 121

FORUM

The 1946 Holocaust Interviews: David Boder’s Intermedia Project in the Digital Age 139

REVIEWS

Charlotte A. Lerg, Die Amerikanische Revolution(2010); Charlotte A. Lerg, Amerika als Argument: Die deutsche Amerika-Forschung im Vormärz und ihre politische Deutung in der Revolution von 1848/49 (2011) 151U d o S c h e m m e l , Laien in lutherischen Kirchenordnungen: Die unterschiedliche Entwicklung ihres Beeinflussungspotentials au f Gemeindebelange im 18. Jahrhundert in Pennsylvania im Vergleich zu Kirchenordnungen des Landesherrlichen Kirchenregiments— dargestellt an der Genese der Kirchenordnung der St.-Michaelis-Gemeinde in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2012) 155 Alex Jansen, Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation Through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century (2011) 158

WOLFGANG HOCHBRUCK

MARTIN SEIDL

MICHAEL DOPFFEL

DAMIEN SCHLARB

STEFANIE SCHÄFER

KLAUS H. SCHMIDT

DANIEL STEIN

Andrea Mehrländer, The Germans o f Charleston, Richmond and New Orleans during the Civil War Period, 1850-1870 (2011) 159 Eve Tavor Bannet, Transatlantic Stories and the History o f Reading, 1720-1810: Migrant Fictions (2011) 161Nicole Waller, American Encounters with Islam in the Atlantic World (2011) 162 Bradley A. Johnson, The Characteristic Theology o f Herman Melville: Aesthetics, Politics, Duplicity(2011) 165Günter Leypoldt and Bernd Engler, eds., American Cultural Icons: The Production o f Representative Lives (2010) 167Ulrich Eschborn, Stories o f Survival: John Edgar Wideman’s Representations o f History (2011) 168Jared Gardner, Projections: Comics and the History o f Twenty-First- Century Storytelling (2012) 171

CONTRIBUTORS 175

The Governmentality of Slavery in Colonial Boston, 1690-1760

D o m in ik N a g l

A B ST R A C T

This article explores slavery in colonial Boston as a contradictory legal, cultural, and religious institution by introducing the concepts of ‘pastoral power’ and ‘governmentality’ as analytical instruments to the study of slavery. New England slavery was a culturally specific form of bondage that still rested upon pre-modern and religious notions of contract. A n all-pervasive Puritan religious culture, and the spatial and social proximity of the slaves and their masters, gave New England slavery its unique character and produced a distinct way of slave management that is best described as ‘Puritan governmentality of slavery.’ In addition, it is suggested that the concept of governmentality addresses some of the criticisms leveled against Eugene Genovese’s model of slavery as ‘paternalism,’ as it allows for the recognition of resistance as a defining feature of slavery.

Introduction

In colonial British North America, slavery was an institution still in the making as the early modern period saw the evolution of a variety of different systems of slavery. Starkly contrasting geographic, demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural conditions produced manifold power relations that allowed a plurality of diverse forms of slavery to evolve. While there exists a large body of literature on slavery in the southern colonies, the scholarship on slavery in colonial New England is slight and lacks detail. This neglect of attention is unfortunate since the case of New England slavery is marked by some curious peculiarities that make it an interesting counterpart to the southern slave systems. Slavery in British North America was an inherently contradictory institution; it rested on the legal assumption that certain groups of racially, socially, and culturally stigmatized persons could lose their status as legal subjects, become servants for life, and thus be turned into chattel—moveable property not much different from tools or livestock. From this vantage point, a slave was simply a means of production that could be owned, sold, and inherited. In this regard, the governance of slavery was a matter of the law of property. The necessary precondition for reducing wayward living human beings into property, however, was their deprivation of rights and the development of control mechanisms that should guarantee obedience to their masters. Consequently, the law of property was never enough to regulate slavery.

Below the surface of property definitions, slavery was a complex social relationship created and reproduced by the interaction of the slaves, the masters and their household members, the state, and society as a whole. Thus, it clearly transcended the confines of individual households and families and could not be treated simply as a matter of private law. For this reason, colonial assemblies tried to regulate

6 Dominik Nagl

racial relations and slave behavior by passing public laws and ordinances. This contradiction is most apparent in the legal treatment of slaves in New England, as slaves occupied a remarkable dual legal status there: they were property and persons at the same time. I claim that this paradoxical legal situation can be attributed to New England’s all pervasive Puritan religious culture and, rooted in the region’s relations of production, a peculiar spatial and social proximity of the slaves and their masters. Puritan slavery was a culturally specific form of bondage that rested upon pre-modern and religious notions of contract. Religion and the slaves’ position in the northern work force decisively shaped slavery in New England and produced what I would like to a call distinct Puritan ‘governmentality’ of slavery.

The concept of governmentality, borrowed from Michel Foucault, refers in its most general usage to the nexus between the self-governance of individuals, i. e., individual behavior/conduct, and the government of society by the state, or political rule (cf. Dean 9-39; see also Burchell, Gordon, and Miller). According to Foucault, this connection became increasingly problematic in the early modern era. In the absence of a single, unified center of government, the question of ‘good governance’ was raised in many different fields at the same time. The idea of governmentality implies that there existed not one, but a multiplicity of ‘governments’ that included the government of individual behavior, the government of the family/ household, the government of church congregations, and the political government of the state (Foucault, “Subject” 221). Thus, the concept of governmentality promises to be a productive analytical tool for the exploration of early modern slavery in New England; it is highly sensitive to the complex relationship between Puritan religious beliefs, family life, and slave management and allows for a description of it as a form of pastoral power. This approach resembles American historian Eugene Genovese’s famous analysis of antebellum slavery in that it attempts to grasp the interaction of micro- and macro-levels of governance and emphasizes the role of culture and religion. Flowever, I am going to show that concept of governmentality avoids some of the criticisms leveled against Genovese’s model of slavery as ‘paternalism,’ which he derived from a problematic adoption of Antonio Gramsci’s Marxist theory of hegemony and class rule in modern capitalist societies to slave societies. In addition, I will illustrate how the subtle subjectivity transforming psychological and cultural micro-techniques of power proved to be insufficient to guarantee the slaves’ obedience and had to be augmented by disciplinary instruments based on force. In Massachusetts, where slavery was largely an urban phenomenon, there was constantly a strong pressure from the local level to pass ever stricter laws for the regulation of the behavior of slaves and free blacks. I will point out, however, that these repressive regulations were largely ineffective; they never developed into a coherent and reliable system of slave control as they left ample room for uncontrolled and sometimes even rebellious activities.

The Emergence of Slavery in Massachusetts

Compared to the South, the relatively small slave population of New England only grew to substantial numbers in the eighteenth century. The first black slaves,

however, came to New England in 1638 when Massachusetts sent Native Americans captured during the Pequot War to the Caribbean in exchange for black slaves.1 According to Edmund Morgan, the enslavement of Indians and Africans, as well as the coercive servitude of Scottish and Irish prisoners of war in New England, was justified by claiming they had forfeited their liberty by being vanquished in ‘just wars’ as a punishment for sin (Morgan, Puritan Family 109-11), a belief that derived from the writings of church father St. Augustine. It is important to note, however, that in New England, voluntary and involuntary forms of servitude existed at the same time and that the so-called voluntary forms of servitude dominated by far in terms of numbers. The group of voluntary servants consisted of children who had been apprenticed to masters by their parents to learn a trade, servants who were hired as laborers for a couple of years, and the famous indentured servants—those who wanted to get to America but could not afford to pay for the voyage, and for this reason contracted with a master to serve for seven years in exchange for passage to the New World. Involuntary servitude, on the other hand, could be afflicted on criminals and prisoners made in (just) wars as punishment. In contrast to the enslaved Indians and Africans, however, white servants were never held in perpetual bondage (Morgan, Puritan Family 109-11). The perpetual enslavement of ‘heathens’ was justified by reference to the Old Testament, and the Puritans claimed that God had given them Indian and black servants as part of their biblical inheritance (L. Greene, Negro 151). The old Hebrews knew two types of servitude: the servitude of male Jewish servants was legally limited to six years unless they decided to stay voluntarily with their masters in order to remain with an enslaved wife (Exod. 21.2-6); non-Jewish slaves (gentiles), in contrast, could be kept in perpetual bondage and be inherited in the family (Lev. 25.44, 46). 2 Thus, biblical example, the just war theory, and a religious sense of mission towards the indigenous ‘devil worshippers,’ combined with an ethnocentric sentiment of cultural superiority, helped the Puritans to reconcile slavery and Christianity from early on.3 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Massachusetts had already legally recognized slavery in 1639. The “Body of Liberties” stated that “there shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage or Captivi- tie amongst us unles it be lawfull Captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us” (Whitmore 53; par. 91).

During the early decades of the colony, however, the number of slaves remained small and saw a sharp increase only in the first half of the eighteenth century. The years of the largest growth, between 1700 and 1750, coincided with a time of economic prosperity that also was characterized by an increase in New England’s

The Governmentality of Slavery in Colonial Boston, 1690-1760 7

1 “We sent 15 of the boys and 2 of the women to the Bermudas by Mr. Pierce; but he missing it carried them to Providence Isle” (Winthrop 227-28). For a closer examination see Jennings 225-26; Mason 616-20; Fickes 58-81; L. Greene, Negro 15-18; Moore 4-7; Hyde 12-13.

2 See Reiss 3. For the distinction of the two different types of servitude described in the Old Testament, see Cobb xxxviii-xlix.

3 For an overview on the debate on Indian-White relations and the settlers’ ethnocultural self-perception in Puritan Massachusetts, see Thomas 3-27. The title is somewhat misleading since the author admits that Puritan attitudes were (albeit despicable) not ‘racial’ in the modern sense of the word. See also Bailey 39-73.

8 Dominik Nagl

agricultural and industrial productivity and a rise of market oriented activities (Melish 19-20). The eighteenth century also saw the rise of New England’s commercial involvement in the slave trade, which affected New England’s economic development far more directly than slave holding (L. Greene, “Slave-Holding” 502). In the first decades of the eighteenth century, before they were surpassed by Rhode Island towns such as Newport, Bristol, and Providence, Boston merchants played a leading role in the slave trade (McManus 10). The African slave trade racialized slavery by turning perpetual bondage into an almost exclusively black institution, even threatening the liberty of free blacks, because skin color became increasingly synonymous with social status.4

One example of this development is the story of Thomas Barter, a black man who was in danger of becoming enslaved in Boston in 1712.5 Thomas Barter was the son of Edward Barter, a black African interpreter working for English slave traders on the coast of Guinea. Edward Barter had been educated in England and had a close relationship with his European business partners (Nagl 645); one of his daughters was even married to an English slave trader. Around 1708 Edward Barter decided to put his son Thomas into the custody of the ship captain John Sadler who should take him to England. Thomas was supposed

to be Educated & Instructed to read & write, & to learn such other things as should be thought proper & Convenient, and at the End of the six years [...] [he] was to be returned to his said Father again”. Edward Barter promised John Sadler to pay “what he [Sadler] should Expend & lay out in his Education & bringing [him] up [...].

When the young man left the coast of Africa, however, he was to embark upon an unforeseen odyssey around the ‘Black Atlantic.’ As promised, Captain Sadler took him to London, but as the captain was obliged to continue his trip to Weymouth, he decided to leave Thomas Barter “under the Care & Keeping of One John Ingleton of London Brandyman where he was to Continue till the sd. Sadlers return back from Weymouth.” But John Ingleton, far from keeping his promise, soon disposed himself of Thomas Barter by handing him over to the ship captain Jeremiah Turner. They then “proceeded from London to New York in America.” On the voyage back to Lisbon, the ship was captured by two French battle ships and “& Carryed into Cadiz in the Kingdom of Spain” where Thomas Barter was imprisoned with the rest of the crew. When they were finally released six month later, Barter was allowed to leave with them, as two crew members confirmed that he was not a slave. But Barter’s unlucky destiny did not stop there. He decided to remain with Captain Turner and join him on a trip to Virginia. When they got back to London, Barter was left in the custody of a Mr. Benjamin Barnes. Barnes was a man of sinister intentions, for he embarked on a ship to Boston with Barter and as soon as they arrived there, he tried to sell the surprised young African man as a slave. In order to prevent himself from being enslaved, Barter desperately wrote a petition to “His Excellency the Governor and to the Hono[ra]ble. Her

4 For a comprehensive analysis of the Massachusetts slave trade, see Desrochers, “Slave” 623-64 and Desrochers, “Every Picture” 146-216.

5 The following story is reconstructed from court file papers found in The Suffolk Files Collection. A ll following quotations are taken from these pages.


Maj.[es]ties Council, or to any Court of Justice whom it may Concern” in which he begged that no injustice should be done to him. Paul Dudley, a Justice of the Peace in Boston, upon receiving this information, ordered that Benjamin Barnes and his brother James Barnes post a security of fifty pounds each to ensure that they would not sell “the sd. Negro out of this Province without the Knowledge & Consent of Her Majesties Government or some Court of Justice within ye Province.” While the ultimate fate of Thomas Barter cannot be determined from the surviving documents, there exists a court testimony of a Boston slave trader who claimed to know Thomas Barter’s father in Africa, a fact that lends some credibility to the whole story.

The Law and the Economy of Slavery in Massachusetts

The case of Thomas Barter is a fascinating example of the contradictory legal and social relations slavery produced in Massachusetts. The fact that Barter took recourse to court in a desperate attempt to escape his enslavement points to a rather unique feature of slavery in the colony, as Barter was not the first black person in Massachusetts to contest his legal status in court. In 1701, Adam, a slave to the Judge John Saffin, had entered a protracted legal battle against his master, who had broken his promise to set him at liberty if he faithfully served him for seven years.6 The case was even brought before the highest court of the colony, and Adam finally was declared free in 1703. What had enabled Adam to sue his master in the first place was the curious legal form slavery had assumed in New England. Lorenzo Greene points out that New England slavery was a “blending of servitude and bondage” (Negro 168),7 and for this reason New England slaves occupied a dual legal status: they were property and persons at the same tim e—property in the sense that they could be traded and treated as commodities, and persons because they still were entitled to certain rights under the law. In New England, slaves were legal subjects who could make contracts, were allowed to participate in church service, could testify in court as witnesses against both blacks and whites, and were even able to file law suits (L. Greene, Negro 179). This observation is an important deviation from the sociological concepts in which slavery is usually conceived, as theoretical notions of slavery often entail an idea of “social death” in the sense that slaves did not belong to the community and had no social existence independent from their masters (Patterson 38). This resonates with what Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has recently analyzed with recourse to the antique figure of the “homo sacer.” Slaves resemble Agamben’s “homines sacres” because they might be said to lose their political lives (zoe) by becoming excluded from society and by being reduced to their bare biological lives (bios) (6-12). A closer look, however, reveals that these

6 See Greene, Negro 184-85; Towner, “A Fondness” 201-19; Towner, “Sewall-Saffin” 40-52; Goodell, “John Saffin” 85-112. See also Peterson; Von Frank; Sands; Saffin, His Book.

1 For a recent discussion of the old controversy as to whether the slaves in early seventeenth century had the same legal status as indentured servants, see Berg.

10 Dominik Nagl

theoretical constructs can be misleading when they are applied to the history of the institution of slavery. Slavery evolved gradually over time, with the initial situation of relative openness giving way to the step-by-step codification of the system of chattel slavery around 1700. The ‘social death’ of the slaves, therefore, was neither instant nor sudden. In New England masters could not claim a boundless sovereignty over death and life. Slaves did not completely lose their political lives and legal bodies, and for this reason they could not be killed with impunity (L. Greene, Negro 177). New England slavery, after all, was not that much different from other forms of early modern bondage such as indentured servitude (Towner, “A Good Master” 149-50).

This special legal status was fostered and supported by the slaves’ socioeconomic position in New England’s social structure. Most of the slaves were male and could be found in the commercial and agricultural seaport towns along the coast and in a few agricultural areas. With the significant exception of Rhode Island, large-scale slave plantations, such as those that existed in the southern colonies, did not exist in New England, and in the colonial era blacks never constituted more than 2.5 % of New England’s population (McCusker 652; “Boston Census” 95-97). In Massachusetts the highest number of slaves could be found in Suffolk County; Boston in particular harbored a substantial number of the colony’s black population. According to a census taken in 1754, there were 4,489 slaves in Massachusetts and 989 of them—22 % — lived in Boston, thus making up 10 % of the city’s population. Lawrence Towner has even estimated that in the 1730s and ’40s black servants and slaves became the largest single source of imported labor in Massachusetts (“A Good Master” 151). While the slaves of Boston—like elsewhere in New England— seem to have been employed in a great variety of functions, a majority were employed in domestic service. Some performed unskilled labor in shipbuilding, and a minority were even trained in skilled trades such as carpentry, blacksmithing, and tailoring. In 1795 Reverend Jeremy Belknap recalled that “in the maritime towns, the negroes served either in families or at mechanical employments” (200). An eighteenth-century author noted that “there is no house in Boston, however, small may be its means, that has not one or two [Negroes]” (Shurtleff 48-49.) However, from the surviving names of slave holders, it appears that a large number were members of the city’s political and social elite, even though there were also some wealthy artisans among them (Horton and Horton 14). Eminent men of the Boston community—doctors, lawyers, ministers, deacons, merchants, sea captains, justices, and even governors—owned slaves. These slaves typically did not live physically separated from the white members of their masters’ family, but were housed, slept, and often worked under the same roof. And just like the white population of New England, slaves were required to legitimize their sexual relationships by marrying, and their intentions to marry had to be made public before the wedding. Furthermore, even though there seems to have been little effort among early Puritans to Christianize their slaves, there is at least anecdotal evidence that in New England slaves were more often encouraged to attend church service than their fellow sufferers in the south. When in the eighteenth century—after the Bishop of London had made a definite statement on the issue in 1727—fears waned that the slaves’ conversion to Christianity would set them free, and a considerable number were even


baptized into membership of their masters’ churches.8 In sum, in New England the spatial proximity, together with the strong Puritan foundation of the colony’s culture, contributed to the slave’s social integration into their master’s family and the larger society. William D. Pierson describes the familiar nature of this type of slavery with the term “family slavery,” which drew heavily on the biblical example of the patriarchal family (25-26). Thus, in colonial Massachusetts slave management was part of a system of ‘family government’ that was characterized by an intimate cohabitation of masters and slaves.

‘Pastoral Power’ and ‘Governmentality’ in Puritan Massachusetts

A good example of this religiously grounded “family government” (Morgan, Puritan Family) can be found in the case of the famous Puritan theologian and Reverend of Boston’s Old North Church, Cotton Mather. While Mather is chiefly remembered for his involvement in and his account of the Salem witch trials, it is less known that in 1717 Mather opened a short-lived night school for religious instruction for blacks and Indians (Horton and Horton 21), and that between 1706 and 1717 he himself owned a slave whom he called Onesimus.9 In his diary entry for December 1706, Mather recounts their first encounter:

Some gentlemen of our Church, understanding (without any Application of mine to them for such a Thing,) that I wanted a good servant, at the expence of between forty and fifty Pounds, purchased for me, a very likely Slave; a young man, who is a Negro of a promising Aspect and Temper, And this Day they presented him unto me. It seems to be a might Smile of Heaven upon my family; and it arrives at an observable Time Unto me.I putt upon him the name of Onesimus; and I resolved with The Help of the Lord, that I would use the Best Endeavors to make him a Servant of Christ. (Diary 1: 579)

Mather named his slave Onesimus after a biblical slave who had escaped from his Christian master Philemon. Apostle Paul eventually met the runaway slave, converted him to Christianity and sent him back to his old master with a letter that asked Philemon to take Onesimus in again, “not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved” (Philemon 1:10, 16) Around 1716 Mather, apparently having some quarrels with Onesimus, who now “proves wicked, and grows useless, Froward and Immorigerous,” allowed Onesimus to buy his freedom by saving money to purchase for Mather the young black slave Obadiah, who was a “a better servant in his Room” (Diary 2: 363). After his release, however, Onesimus seems to have continued to work in M ather’s household together with other servants. He became famous in 1721 when a devastating smallpox epidemic struck Boston, and Mather used information he had learned some years earlier from his former slave when he proposed “ye Method of Inoculation,” a vaccination technique practiced in Africa and Asia Minor, as the best way to fight the disease. M ather’s relationship with Onesimus seems to have been not without difficulties, but his diary clearly indicates his benevolent and educational intentions:

8 See Hyde 86; Greene, Negro 268; Jernegan 32.9 See Niven 640-41; Winslow 539-59; Middlekauf 354-59; Silverman 264-65.

12 Dominik Nagl

There are several points, relating to the Instruction and management of my Servant Onesimus, which I would now more than ever prosecute. He shall be sure to read every Day. From thence, I will have him go on to writing. He shall be frequently Catechised.I would also invent some advantageous Way, wherein he may spend his Liesure-hours. (Diary 2: 271-72)

In January 1714 Mather recorded in his Diary the death of Onesimus’ son and claimed to use the tragic event to “incalculate agreeable Admonitions of Piety upon him” (2: 282). When Onesimus became implied in “some actions of a thievish aspect,” Mather gloomily noted “that I must keep strict Eye on my Servant Onesimus; especially with regard unto his company”; but at the same time Mather referred to him as a family member when he continued:

But then, upon every observable Miscarriage of any Person in my Family, I must make my flight unto the Blood of my Savior, as a Family Sacrifice: so that Wrath of God may be turned away from my Family. (Diary 2 : 139)

M ather’s remarks on slavery reveal a distinct ‘governmentalty’ of slavery, a term I understand as a specific Puritan rationality of rule and practice of mastership that places the slave within the family.10 This governmentality is not based primarily on force or coercive measures, but stresses forms of governance that make use of close social surveillance by the community and that apply discourses and symbols as means of domination. Mather summarized the essence of this Puritan governmentality of slavery in July 1713 when he wrote:

My Negro-Servant, is [...] more easily govern’d and managed, by the Principles of reason, agreeably offered unto him, than by any other methods. I would oftener call him aside, and assay to reason him into good behavior. (Diary 2: 222)

Religious instruction, education, and the internalization of norms and rules stand out as key elements of a form of slave management directed at producing voluntary compliance and good self-conduct.

Puritan governmentality shows some similarities with the affirmative notion of slavery as a system of benevolent paternalism which was popular among southern slave holders in the nineteenth century. By applying Gramsci’s concept of ‘hegemony,’ Genovese integrated the paternalistic view of slavery that had been prominently put forward by southern historian Ulrich B. Phillips into a Marxist analysis of southern slavery. It is important, however, to understand the differences and theoretical shortcomings of Genovese’s approach.11 Clarence E. Walker and others have convincingly argued that Genovese uses the notion of hegemony as an all-explaining grand narrative that simply dresses the slaveholders’ view of slavery in Marxist clothing. Thus the concept obscures as much about antebellum slavery as it reveals. Hegemony allows Genovese to preserve his belief in class domination and yet explain the absence of visible class struggle. Viewed in this context, the idea of hegemony is part of the Marxist effort to explain why the great revolu

10 For a general analysis of the relationship between Puritanism and Slavery, which also addresses the problem of slave baptism, see Rosenthal 62-81.

11 For a comprehensive treatment of the problem and a fundamental critique of the concepts of ideology, see Chartier; Kolchin 52-67; Walker 56-72.

tions (in this case slave revolts) did not occur as they should have and therefore glosses over the many existing social differences and non-revolutionary conflicts in southern society by presenting it as a static, almost unchanging social formation. Moreover, differences of opinion concerning disputes over political representation, taxes, and slavery have led some scholars to suggest that the planter’s dominance was never so absolute as to constitute a ‘hegemony.’ The model of an all-pervasive planter hegemony exclude the idea that the slaves might have been able to develop an independent interpretation of religion. In Genovese’s conception of American slave Christianity, religion is analyzed along functional lines and described as a vehicle of consent; it did not generate a sense of denial that would culminate in revolt. Slaves allegedly did not accept the idea of original sin and affirmed the ‘joy in life in the face of every trial.’ According to Genovese, this prevented the development of a revolutionary or politically militant millennialism and messianism. Thus, religion appears simply to have mystified the slaves’ sense of political power and reconciled them to their position in society. Genovese’s history, argues Walker, is all in all

too logical to be an accurate picture of the past, for what Genovese has done is to take an ambiguous theoretical construct and make it precise. In brief, Genovese’s hegemony coheres where Gramsci’s may have not, for Gramsci’s writings suggest that a ruling class’s exercise of hegemony was never total nor static. Furthermore, hegemony’s scope and impact, Gramsci argued, varied from one society to another. Genovese makes only perfunctory obeisance to these qualifications. Hegemony as he uses the concept is all- encompassing and pervasive (58).

In addition, Genovese tends to downplay the coercive nature of slavery by uncritically conflating the masters’ proslavery rhetoric with the reality of power relationships under slavery in the antebellum South. He thus establishes paternalism as an umbrella term under which all master-slave relations can be subsumed. Walker claims, however, that slavery in the period discussed by Genovese necessarily involved mutuality or reciprocity. If this is the case, antebellum slavery was not paternalistic at all: “The planters may have defended slavery with a rhetoric whose imagery was domestic and familial, but this was only a smokescreen for exploitation or a technique of exploitation” (63). Another big problem is Genovese’s emphasis on class at the expense of race when he argues that slavery is “by definition and in essence” (Walker 66) a system of class rule. Racism, however, argues Robert Blauner, “excludes a category of people from participation in society in a different way than does class hegemony and exploitation. The thrust of racism is to de-humanize, to violate dignity and degrade personalities in a much more pervasive and all-inclusive way than class exploitation” (qtd. in Walker 66).

One might, perhaps, argue that at least in some respects Genovese’s model of a benevolent paternalist slave system (defined as a system of reciprocal obligations) is a more appropriate description of the family- and household-based slavery of Puritan New England than that of the antebellum South. However, given the relatively marginal role slave labor played in New England’s economy, one can hardly portray Massachusetts slavery as a system of social class dominance of slaveholders and apply a Marxist notion of ideology in the sense of ‘false consciousness’ or ‘hegemony’ in the immediate interest of a ruling planter class. Be


14 Dominik Nagl

sides, one must keep in mind that the proslavery argument of paternalism in nineteenth-century discourses on slavery evolved in a time when the institution of slavery seemed to be increasingly at odds with the principles of liberal democracy. Accordingly, paternalism served as an unveiled attempt to defend slavery against modern ideas of human rights. In contrast, the paternal elements in the discourse on slavery in colonial New England were not born of a need to justify the institution of slavery in face of liberal values (J. Greene 793) or dictated by the necessity to find a way “of mediating irreconcilable class and racial conflicts” (Genovese 6); they derived from a genuinely pre-modern and religiously based world view that produced a distinct form of human bondage. Moreover, the reality of slavery in colonial Massachusetts cannot be equated with Southern plantation slavery. Southern slaves—resembling Agamben’s “homines sacres”—never possessed any legal rights comparable to those of the slaves in colonial Massachusetts. The examples of Thomas Barter and John Saffin’s slave Adam show that slaves had recourse to courts which sometimes even enabled them to sue their masters. This peculiar legal status was an expression of a distinctly Puritan practice of slavery and a religious understanding of society which derived from medieval and ancient notions of servitude. In contrast to the simplifying, totalizing notion of slavery as a system of hegemonic class rule, a governmentality approach rejects the idea that individual social classes can exert total ideological control over society or permanently articulate coherent interests. It emphasizes that social and cultural domination cannot be reduced to the economic interests of one social class. Governmentality, rather, investigates historically, and beginning from the lowest level, determines how the multiplicity of dispersed local power relations shape subjectivities by weaving together micro-practices of selfconduct and macro-practices of government. Power is thus conceived as “action on actions” and government as the “the conduct of conduct” (Foucault, “Subject” 221). Within this framework resistance is not marginalized as in Genovese’s model of hegemony, but is an ever-present possibility. It is a consequence of the subjects’ freedom to act and a necessary outcome of Foucault’s action-oriented notion of power.12 Moreover, governmentality entails the idea that religion, and churches in particular, produce and maintain the knowledge, truths, and social order associated with self-regulated governance. It is this emphasis on religious and spiritual practices that make the governmentality approach a valuable contribution to the study of Puritan society (see Bendle).

The Puritan practice of slavery entailed a form of exercising power that noticeably resembles Foucault’s description of “Christian pastoral power.”13 Foucault describes pastoral power as a predecessor of or a ‘prelude’ to the modern and secularized notions of political rule that—from the sixteenth century on

12 “Freedom is not only a necessary precondition of power, but also that which resists power. Precisely because freedom is an indispensable element of any power relation, there are no power relations without the possibility of resistance. [...] Foucault’s novel conception of power as ‘action on actions’ redirects the theoretical orientation of his earlier works, which had stressed the anonymity of power and its strategies” (Lemke 305; translation mine).

11 See Foucault, Security, especially lectures seven, eight, and nine (163-254); Foucault, “Subject” (213-14); Foucault, History (136).

ward—gradually evolved out of the earlier pastoral modes of governance. Pastoral power is based on the imitation of the example of pastoral leadership of religious congregations. While the origins of this notion of power are clearly religious, it also became a guiding principle for exercising social and political power in the early modern era. In this model the Christian pastor assumes the role of a ‘good shepherd’ who guards and leads his flock by providing spiritual leadership, teaching the religious truth, and seeing to it that the godly commands are obeyed. It is the ultimate aim of pastoral power to guide humans on the right way so that they are able to find the path to salvation. In order to reach this goal, pastoral power developed into an ‘art how to govern humans.’ This art of governance operates on the micro-level of the individual and makes use of confessional self-examination and internalization of practices of self-discipline (power techniques orientated towards individuals), that are the very same techniques described by Cotton Mather as the principles of good slave management (Foucault, ‘Omnes’ 221). Moreover, the Christian pastorate is characterized by a collective responsibility between the group, the individual, and the pastor as their spiritual leader. Every soul is important to God, and the pastor (or his secular counterpart) will eventually be held accountable not only for the management of the group as a whole, but also for the failings of individual members. This aspect of pastoral power appears in M ather’s diary in connection with Onesimus’s involvement in criminal activities. Mather clearly expresses the fear that he and his family might be punished by God for Onesimus’s wrongdoing when he writes: “I must make my Flight Unto to the Blood of my Saviour, as a Family-Sacrifice; that so the Wrath of God may be turned away from my Family” (Diary 2: 139). According to this view, both group and individual share a common destiny: on the one hand, the fate of the group affects every individual, but on the other hand, individual failings might lead to the punishment of the whole society. Edmund S. Morgan has convincingly explained how this principle was put into practice in Puritan New England. Since the whole community had promised obedience to God, the community as a whole could be punished for the sins of any delinquent individual if it did not prosecute that person. By publicly punishing him or her, the community expressed its disapproval of the sinful aberrations and so escaped collective responsibility for them. Constant vigilance should prevent sin from going unpunished: “It was as if a district occupied by a military force were given notice that for any disorder the whole community would be penalized, innocent and guilty alike” (Puritan Family 10). Additionally, pastoral power is characterized by a patriarchal and hierarchical notion of authority structures based on the all-pervasive family analogy and the concept of patria potestas—the legal authority of a father over his children. From this perspective, all forms of temporal rule are basically an earthly emulation of God’s patriarchal rule of the universe, and the political order on earth can be described as a hierarchical continuum of authorities that goes from God down to the political ruler, then to the family father, and so on. Accordingly, Puritan pastors maintained that civil order and civil government were of divine origin. John Norton expressed this notion when he argued in 1659 that “order is a divine disposal, of superior and inferior relations, in humane or Christian societies” (qtd. in Morgan, Puritan Family 25).

The Governmentality o f Slavery in Colonial Boston, 1690-1760 15

16 Dominik Nagl

As Perry Miller and others have shown, Puritan theology links the individual, God, and society by the Calvinistic concept of ‘covenant’ (Errand 48-98). It is this concept that inserted the mechanisms of pastoral power into the political and social institutions of New England, and it had a profound effect on slavery. A covenant was a form of contract derived from biblical examples in the Old Testament (Kline 27). It was not designed, however, as a treaty between equal parties, “but one between a king and his subjects, and it was a binding contract that stated each party’s responsibilities and the punishment that would be meted if either side was delinquent” (Kuehne 36). In Puritan thought, almost all social and spiritual relationships were conceived as hierarchical contractual relationships which took the form of dualistic covenants that bound the participating parties in mutual obligation (Morgan, Puritan Family 25). A first covenant, the ‘covenant of works,’ was made between God and Adam, but it became invalid when Adam violated God’s commands. Later God made a new covenant, the ‘covenant of grace,’ with Abraham (Knight 89). In it God promised to save Abraham (as an individual), his family, and his descendants (the people of Israel) by sending a redeemer (Morgan, Puritan Political Ideas xx-xxi). The prerequisite of God’s deal with Abraham was a covenant which God had made with Jesus and which already existed “from the beginning of time, even before the transaction with Abraham” (Miller, New England 406). In this ‘covenant of redemption,’ “God covenanted with Christ that if he would pay the full price for the redemption of beleevers [sic], they should be discharged. Christ hath paid the price [...]” (Miller, New England 406). With the coming of Christ, every Christian who responds to God’s grace by faith can receive salvation as God’s gift. A holy way of life (sanctification) was interpreted as a sign of election (salvation), but—according to the theory of predestination—the former certainly could not cause the latter.

The Puritans’ typological reading of the Bible led them to believe that Christians had inherited the covenant of grace from Abraham not only as individuals, but also as families and nations. On the group level, however, the covenant theory conflicted with the notion of predestination. The Puritans firmly believed that there were only a small number of persons elected for salvation, and so it could not be assumed that every member of their families, congregations, or political community would be spared from damnation. For this reason they were forced to develop the theological theory of the covenant of grace into a political theory of social contract that also knew family, church, and state covenants:

The covenant, they said, when applied to a group, originated in, but was not the same as, the covenant of an individual. It had different terms and a different name. It was called a family covenant or a church covenant or a state covenant, instead of a covenant of grace, and the group engaging in it promised external obedience of faith and received external, temporal prosperity instead of eternal salvation. Since every group contained unbelievers, no group as such was capable of salvation. (Morgan, Puritan Family 9)

Echoing St. Augustine’s distinction between an earthly and a heavenly city, Puritans distinguished between a temporal ‘visible church,’ which included true believers and outwardly righteous sinners, from the eternal ‘invisible church,’ which

Covenant, Government, and Family Slavery

was reserved for true saints. The existence of ‘black sheep’—not only in the visible church, but also in the families and in the state—and the reciprocal logic of pastoral power required that the ‘governments’ of these bodies should at least guarantee the knowledge of and formal obedience to God’s commands. Otherwise, the whole collective would suffer under God’s punishment. Thus it becomes understandable that the institution of the family did not exist as “a private retreat from the public world” but “was viewed as extension of, rather than escape from, all other institutions; it was the first filiation that led to all subsequent affiliations” (Kaufmann 20). The result of this covenantal construction of society was a web of mutual obligations and a social order in which individual identity “was defined by one’s relation to, not independence from, institutions such as church, state and family” (Kaufmann 15).

Slavery as a coercive institution could not easily be integrated into this system of contractual relationships in which even forms of servitude such as indenture were based on the (theoretical) free will of its participants. When Richard Mather stated that “all relations which are neither naturall nor violent, but voluntary, are by vertue of some covenant” (22), there were two exceptions implied: children and prisoners of war. Since early Puritan law defined slaves as prisoners made in just wars, they belonged to the latter category. Although slaves and children were not active participants in the making of a covenant, because they were family members they were indirectly implied in the family covenant. This covenant required the head of the household to take responsibility for his family’s religious instruction and good behavior; he could demand strict obedience from them because the Puritan world view “strongly emphasized the submission of children and other dependents within the family” (Anderson 159). Cotton Mather even claimed that masters “a little bear the image of God in that Government, which you have over your servants” (Good Master 7). In the words of the English seventeenth-century political theorist Robert Filmer, it was the duty of fathers and kings “to preserve, feed, clothe, instruct, and defend” the subjects under their care and keeping (10). Failure to comply with this command could be interpreted as a sinful abuse of power that would eventually be punished by God. For this reason, Cotton Mather reminded masters of their “pastoral” duties and warned them of the consequences—for both themselves and their slaves—of neglecting this responsibility. In 1706 he vehemently argued for the religious education of slaves in his essay The Negro Christianized:

There are Servants pertaining to thy Household. It is a mighty Power which thou hast over them; A Despotick Power which gives thee numberless Advantages, to call them, and lead them into the Way of the Lord. Art thou Regardless of bringing them into Christianity? Then thou doest not Walk in the Steps of our Father Abraham; and art not like to call him thy Father [...] When such Christians appear before the Glorious LORD, it will be in vain for them to plead, that they call’d him LORD, and own’d Him for their LORD. If they did it why did they not bring their SERVANTS under Governement of the LORD? Verily, He will say to such Christians, I knew you not. (5-13)

Cotton Mather—and other ministers such as Ezra Stiles, Daniel Wadsworth, and Parson Ashley—not only threatened the slaveholders with eternal damnation (Mather’s formulation clearly alludes to Matthew 7.21-23), but they were also


18 Dominik Nagl

eager to show that Christianizing the slaves would have immediate advantages for the masters themselves. “Yea, the pious Masters,” Mather wrote, “that have instituted in their Servants in Christian Piety, will even in this Life have a sensible Recompence” (Negro 20). The “Recompence” the masters could expect was a “more Serviceable, and Obedient and Obliging Behaviour of their Servants” because the slaves—“tinged with Spirit of Christianity”—would be exceedingly dutiful, patient, faithful, and “afraid of speaking or doing any thing that may justly diplease you” (Negro 21). With the intention to disperse the slave holders’ fears that baptism might entitle the slaves to freedom, Mather unambiguously declared that there existed no contradiction between Christianity and slavery:

What Law is it, that Sets the Baptised Slave at Liberty? Not the Law of Christianity: that allows of Slavery; Only it wonderfully Dulcifies, and Mollifies, and Moderates the Circumstances of it. Christianity directs a Slave, upon his embracing the Law of the R edeemer, to satisfy himself, That he is the Lords Free-man, tho’ he continues a Slave. [...] Will the Canon law do it? No; The Canons of Numberless Councils, mention, the Slaves of Christians, without any contradiction. Will the Civil Law do it? No: Tell, if you can, any part of Christendom, wherein Slaves are not frequently to be met withal. But is not Freedom to be claim’d for a Baptised Slave, by the English Constitution? The English Laws, about Villians, or, Slaves, will not say so. (Negro 26-27)

It is interesting to note that Mather’s religious convictions led him to repudiate any racial justifications of slavery. For such an old-line Puritan, there was no spiritual gap between himself and a slave, and it could not be ruled out “that this Poor Creature may belong to the Election of God!” (Negro 3). The idea (originally derived from Aristotle) that certain groups of people were born to be slaves by their natural character was alien to Cotton Mather’s thought. Acknowledging a need to ‘civilize’ the supposedly culturally backward black servants, Mather insisted that Africans were endowed with a “Reasonable Soul” and fiercely lashed out at the emerging racial thought:

They are Men, and not Beasts that you have bought, and they must be used accordingly.’Tis true; They are Barbarous. But so were our own Ancestors. The Britons were in many things as Barbarous, but a little before our Saviours Nativity, as the Negroes are at this day if there be any Credit in Caesars Commentaries. Christianity will be the best cure for this Barbarity. [...] The God who looks on the Heart, is not moved by the colour of the Skin. (Negro 23-25)

Mather, however, was living in a time when traditional values of Puritanism were in decline. In the eighteenth century, commercial activities and a materialistic mindset more and more replaced old religious attitudes. These changes might have affected the general attitude toward slavery, as well. It is likely that certain slaveholders perceived black servants merely as an instrument to generate profit. Racial arguments could emphasize the justification of their economic interest.14 Such an attitude was displayed, for example, in 1701 by the merchant and slave- trader John Saffin, who wrote about “the Negroes Character” in response to Samuel Sewall’s famous anti-slavery tract, “The Selling of Joseph”:

14 The emergence of early modern racial thought is sketched out in Jordan 3-98.


Cowardly and cruel are those Blacks Innate, Prone to Revenge, Imp of inveterate hate. He that exasperates them, soon espies Mischief and Murder in their very eyes. Libidinous, Deceitful, False and Rude, The Spume Issue of Ingratitude. (“Reply” 58)

Mather principally rejected such essentialist notions of race, and he challenged the popular belief that God had singled out black Africans to be enslaved. This religious explanation of black bondage was based on the interpretation of a passage in Genesis (9.20-27) that deals with Noah cursing one of his sons (Haynes 23-40). The Bible relates the story that one day Noah, after enjoying too much wine, was lying naked in his tent. When his son Ham (the name denotes ‘dark’ or ‘black’) stumbles upon Noah in this unflattering situation, he tells his brothers, who cover their father’s naked body. When Noah awakes he curses Ham ’s son Canaan rather than Ham and his brothers, and declares that Canaan was henceforth condemned to be the lowest kind of servant. Mather did not oppose the institution of slavery as such, but the obscure theory that black Africans had to serve as slaves because they were the offspring of Ham seemed to him “not so very certain” (Negro 2). In 1693, having allegedly been approached by a “company of poor Negroes” in need of spiritual guidance, Cotton Mather propounded a set of nine rules for a “Society of Negroes” which was intended to promote their religious instruction and good behavior. The text, which is written from the slaves’ perspective, is a good example of the kind of self-governance and subjectivity M ather expected from ‘good’ slaves. According to the rules, slaves commit themselves to help catch and punish runaway slaves, promise to “avoid all Wicked Company,” and consent to admonish and isolate servants who “fall into the Sin of DrunkenneB, or Swearing, or Cursing, or Lying, or Stealing, or notorious Disobedience or UnfaithfulneB, unto their Masters” (Mather, Rules). In addition, slaves promise to “to Meet in the Evening after the Sabbath; and Pray together by turns,” and assiduously learn the catechism. The rules emphasize the voluntary participation of slaves in their subjugation and demand good selfconduct and the constant surveillance of other slaves.

Sovereign Power or the Limits of “Soft Power”:The Murder of Captain John Codman

The discursively constructed norms found in sermons and programmatic statements of Puritan slaveholders should not be identified naively with the reality of power-relationships under slavery in Puritan New England. The concept of governmentality forces the historian to carefully reconstruct and analyze concrete interactions between masters and slaves in everyday situations. The ‘soft’ mechanisms of power were neither reliable nor very effective and thus had to be supplemented by corporal disciplinary mechanisms. Gyan Prakash has convincingly argued that colonial forms of governmentality always violate metropolitan norms and conceptions of liberty because the colonized subjects are necessarily denied equal political and legal rights. In colonial societies we do not find a historical progression from sovereign to disciplinary and liberal forms of power that characterized European development according to Fou

20 Dominik Nagl

cault.15 Colonial constellations are usually built on some type of master-slave dialectic and thus can never solely rest on ‘pastoral’ and ‘paternal’ mechanisms of domination; they always require a certain degree of force and coercion as a necessary ingredient. Disobedient slaves in New England were usually punished by whipping. Reverend Jeremy Belknap of Boston remembered in the 1790s that his home town, which had a “house of correction, to which disorderly persons of all colours were sent, formed one object of terror to them; but to be sold to the West-Indies, to Carolina, was the highest punishment that could be threatened or inflicted” (“Queries” 200). Massachusetts was the first English colony to legally recognize slavery, and it repeatedly passed legislation concerning matters of race, slavery, and servitude. A n “Act to Prevent Disorders in the Night,” for example, imposed a 9:00 p.m. curfew on Indians, as well as black and mulatto servants and slaves, and another act forbade interracial marriages (Acts 535-36, 578-79). In addition to colony-wide regulations, in 1723 the selectmen of Boston drafted an additional bill for the “Regulation of Negroes, Mulattos and Indians in this town” (Report 173-75), which clearly shows the security concerns of white Bostonians. The bill imposed restrictions on the slaves’ ability to meet, engage in business activities, drink alcohol, move freely around town, go out at night, and possess weapons.

In reality, however, the slaves were never subject to effective disciplinary control mechanisms. The diary of Reverend Stephen Williams from the town of Long- meadow, for instance, reveals his struggles to control his slave Nicolas. Williams complained on several occasions about the “ill carriage” of his “African boy,” lamented that he stayed away at night, and reported that he had to be corrected for his “falsehood and wickedness” (91, 97). The most vivid and extreme example of slave autonomy in the Boston area is the murder of slaveholder Captain John Codman which, in the words of Lois and James Horton, shows that “urban slaves were likely to have a great more freedom of movement and therefore more opportunity for association” (25). Codman was a Charlestown merchant and artisan who owned several slaves. Three of them—house servants Phoebe and Phillis, and Mark, a blacksmith—found the treatment they received from their master unbearable. Mark, who seems to have been the ringleader, was a slave from Barbados who had been brought to Boston as a young child. Codman was his fifth owner, and Mark felt that his earlier owners had given him a much kinder treatment. One had even taught him to read, and had educated him as “tenderly as one of his own Children” (Last). According to Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings as recorded by Abner C. Goodell in “The Murder of John Captain Codman,” in a first, but unsuccessful, attempt to get away from their despotic master, the three slaves decided to burn down Codman’s workshop by placing some chips of wood “between the Blacksmith’s Shop & the Work House” and then throwing a “Coal of Fire” into them. Mark suggested setting fire to the building because “he wanted to get to Boston, and if all was burnt down, he did not know what Master could do without selling us” (131). When the burning of his workhouse did not force Cod-

15 For a statement that emphasizes the ever present dialectics of despotism and self-governance, see Valverde.

man to sell his slaves, Mark conspired with Phillis and Phoebe to kill their master. Phillis later confessed that Mark had told them “that he had read the Bible through, and that it was no Sin to kill him if they did not lay violent Hands on him So as to shed Blood, by sticking or stabbing or cutting his Throat. [...] He said he was uneasy and wanted to have another Master” (127). It was Robbin, the slave of a doctor in Boston, who provided them with arsenic to carry out their plan. The events of the following weeks clearly show how the oppressive slave codes enacted to control the slaves were all in vain, and this story is a telling example of how slaves were able to avoid the laws.

Documental evidence indicates that Mark and Robbin met secretly at night on two occasions—once to receive the arsenic, and a second time to obtain more when the three conspirators lost the poison before their master had received a deadly dose (134). Mark traveled to Boston to obtain additional arsenic from Robbin, who pretended “to the Ferryman that he was a Country negro and wanted to see [...] [Mark] about [...] his Child” (129). Before Mark took the return ferry to Charleston, he and Robbin met another slave to have a “hot Toddy” at Mrs. Shearman’s, who lived close “to the long W harffe” and who was known to sell alcohol to slaves against the will of their masters (135). The following evening the slaves poisoned Codman by putting arsenic into his “barly Drink and into his Infusion, and into his Chocalate, and into his Watergrue” (127), and apparently supplemented the arsenic by mixing lead into their master’s food. The day before Codman died, Phoebe went to her master’s blacksmith shop to meet her fellow slave Tom, who was suffering from an injured eye. There she “got to dancing & mocking master & shaking herself & acting as master did in the Bed; And Tom said he did not care, he hop’d he wou’d never get up again for his Eye’s sake” (136). But as fate would have it, the coroners of the county of Middlesex immediately realized what the slaves had done to Codman. The punishment they received was merciless and intended as a warning to all slaves. While Phoebe seems to have been transported to the West Indies, the fate of Mark and Phillis was reported by the Boston Evening Post on September 22,1755:

Thursday last, in the Afternoon, Mark, a Negro Man, and Phillis, a Negro Woman, both Servants to the late Capt. John Codman, of Charlestown, were executed at Cambridge, for poisoning their said Master [...]. The fellow was hanged, and the Woman burned at a Stake about Ten Yards distant from the Gallows. They both confessed themselves guilty of the Crime for which they suffered, acknowledged the Justice of their Sentence, and died very pentitent [sic]. After Execution, the Body of Mark was brought down to Charlestown Common, and hanged in Chains, on a Gibbet erected there for that Purpose.


Conclusion

Slavery in colonial Massachusetts distinguished itself by a distinct social character and a unique legal form that separated it from slavery in other English colonies. While it is true that racial stereotypes and discourses on racial difference were of increasing significance in the eighteenth century, slavery in Massachusetts—anachronistically combining elements of biblical bondage, indentured

servitude, and early modern slavery—nevertheless retained its peculiar legal structure. For this reason slaves were able to legally challenge their status and sometimes even successfully sued their masters for freedom. The explanation for this peculiarity is to be found in the religious beliefs of the seventeenth-century Puritan settlers, which incorporated the slave into the master’s family by means of extending the theological concept of covenant to the community and household levels. According to this concept, the family was not a private retreat from society, but formed its smallest social, religious, and political unit. Slaves, intimately integrated both spatially and socially into their masters’ households, were conceived as dependant family members. The head of the family was not only the undisputed patriarchal ruler and responsible for the family’s material wellbeing, but was also obliged to provide for spiritual guidance. If a father failed in performing his pastoral duties, God was likely to collectively punish him and his family or even the entire community. The Calvinistic theory of predestination demanded consideration of the slave as a human being, culturally backwards perhaps, but nonetheless endowed with a soul and principally eligible for salvation, just as any other person. Thus, the religious instruction of the slaves should not be perceived as merely a benevolent enterprise or a utilitarian act of paternalisti- cally minded slaveholders. It must be understood as an earnestly felt religious duty that sprang from Puritan theology and fear of punishment. Nevertheless, Massachusetts slaveholders and Puritan ministers knew, of course, that religion also could be beneficially employed as an instrument of behavioral control. Those ‘governmental’ mechanisms of slave control aimed at the voluntary internalization of norms, rules, and patterns of deferential behavior. They were not reliable, however, in bringing about the desired outcomes, and they sometimes even had paradoxical consequences. Mark and other rebellious slaves in colonial Massachusetts embraced Christianity on terms that were at odds with dominant Puritan beliefs, for they creatively adapted the religious messages to their own needs, thus transforming them into a resource of obstinate and resistant behavior. This double-edged nature of the slaves’ religious education appears to have been a problem of slaveholders in general, as it is a well-established fact that some of the prominent leaders of the nineteenth-century North American slave rebellions were religiously motivated. Soft power was never enough to maintain control of the slaves. Slavery is an inherently coercive and exploitative system that cannot dispense with physical violence and despotic forms of power, and colonial Massachusetts was no exception to this rule.

22 Dominik Nagl

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